LUNAR Transportation System

Possibly one of the largest engineering and technological undertakings ever built, the LUNAR Transportation System is a far-reaching pan-galactic stellar railway connecting Homeworld to all of it's major colonies. The train is remarkable for it's extraordinary scale, which is only matched by it's expense. Responsible for LUNAR is a vital component of the Empire's vast trade network.

LUNAR itself, or at least the concept of it, actually predates the Empire. Trade between major colonies was nothing if not a difficult and expensive prospect. Merchant frigates presented easy pickings for any number of pirates and bands of marauders, and the building fuel and maintenance costs associated with sending armed convoy escorts was proving untenable. The costs of actually trading goods between colonies were rapidly exceeding the value of the goods themselves. Finding the solution to this problem, and finding it quickly became a top priority of nearly every corporation, laboratory and government in the galaxy. Everything from a series of linked quantum teleporters placed on every known colony to theoretical inertialess drives were proposed concepts, although nothing came of any of it.

Plans were either far too unrealistic or far too temporary to be considered viable options.
In the midst of this escalating dilemma, Homeworld remained relatively unmolested by the difficulties in trade that the rest of the galaxy, benefitting greatly from the close proximity of it's rich moon. However, while the scale of the costs associated with transporting goods between the two was an order of magnitude less disasterous than what was currently being suffered by humanity's colonies, the businessmen on Homeworld also realized that such a set up was far too expensive to continue as it were. A more permanent method was decided to be necessary, and unlike their colonial counterparts, had access to a much smaller scale problem with a much larger scale industrial complex. The problem of efficiently connecting trade between the major ports of Homeworld's city of Moril and it's moon's city of Keyport was undertaken by none other than Erachin Industries. And in one year, they had a solution. A massive train, loaded to bear with goods and connected by an unprecedented amount of track, hundreds of kilometers in distance and segmented by millions of separate, flexible components. In another two years, backed by the large majority of the corporations with extraplanetary investments on Homeworld and the vast industrial assets available to Erachin Industries, the train system was completed. It proved to be a trade revolution. The costs associated with trade dropped dramatically with the utilization of the newly dubbed LUNAR trainline.

Parallel to the development of the LUNAR, it seemed that the veritable Rosetta Stone of the colonial trade difficulties seemed to emerge. Laboraties, funded by a consortium of powerful businesses invested heavily in colonial trade, developed what would eventually form the groundwork of a newly expanded LUNAR. They developed a massive ultra-conductor network, highly specialized and incredibly expensive, with a key component coming from a newly discovered and incredibly rare element known only as Monadonium, which had been found in bulk in the otherwise unremarkable world of the Jhaedorpa, which when kept at near absolute zero temperatures and treated with intense magnetic waves, could create a massive, invisible bridge of ionized neutrinos, bound by quantum fractal strings and connecting with every ultra conducter with the one closest to it by which you could propel a single synced entity along it at incredibly high speeds. Plans set to work in developing a similar trainline as the LUNAR, which they dubbed the ASTRO.

The ASTRO would never come to be though. To sustain the development of the train network and to keep themselves afloat, colonies everywhere began extensive trade with alien species in order to get by in food, raw materials and mutual profit, but before actual work could be put into the ASTRO itself, Mathias Longfellow began his conquest against the non-human inhabitants of the Mjolner galaxy. Most aliens in the galaxy quickly withdrew from any trading with humans, and the few that did not were inevitably conquered. The corporations, finding their profit margins reaching ridiculously low levels, were forced to abandon the ASTRO project, unable to afford to even mothball the endeavour. They would eventually reconcolidate their power into more military means, focused on a mission to dismantle the Empire by force and form the foundation of what would be known as the Hydra League.

In the aftermath of the war, the Empire would eventually come across the ultra-conducters and research notes that was left in the wake of the ASTRO project. It didn't take much more for them to rededicate their already established war factories in the effort to expand the LUNAR using the same technology that the ASTRO was going to use. After all, with the vast majority of aliens now extinct, enslaved or relegated as second-class citizens, humanity's outer colonies were still faced with the same problem they faced before the war. LUNAR was expanded to a truly extraordinary extent, going from it's original two locations to making rounds between every major human colony within the galaxy, protected by a veritable army of stationed guards disincentivizing attempted train robbery to a point where any party willing to try it would have been considered truly insane.

This didn't stop the Paladins and the mercenaries under the command of Axel Erachin though. In an attempt to recover the precious objects that the Paladins sought. They succeeded in both stopping the LUNAR and recovering their prize, while simultaneously costing the Empire billions in missed goods arrival dates. Despite all this, the LUNAR's engines were repaired in short order.